Player/Park Photos?
Started by metranil (joined · 4 posts · 10 karma) , ago
I just received the email asking for feedback on this. I would just go with the model that most other baseball sims use: we provide our own photos, but the community would make that easier by having upload repositories, etc. Most of us have full photo sets for DMB, Action, and OOTP, so anything most inline with those products' picture philosophies would work best! Thank you, Harlin and team!!!
Brian
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BeatlesEternally (joined · 21 posts · 51 karma) , ago (edited ago)
If I may: trademark and copyright law concern themselves with pecuniary gain when using copyrighted and trademarked items. I know this because I was responsible for compliance as a manager at Penn State and the University of Michigan. I was tasked with ensuring that faculty complied with US Trademark and Copyright laws and regulations.
Even though ActionSims is an online game, you are not supplying trademarked or copyrighted material. Creating the means for end users does not violate trademark and copyright. Documendous LLC is not responsible for what end users do.
That being said, you should not supply a repository FOR logos and player images nor should you allow sharing of them on the ActionSims site. While copyright has gotten stricter, trademark laws can be especially vicious. MLB has not shut down online image sharing because these are targeting end users playing a game rather than using them as financial gain.
Only MLB The Show and OOTP Baseball can legally distribute logos in the game because they are licensed.
Harlin
(joined · 239 posts · 389 karma)
, ago
I appreciate the feedback. I think I've figured out a way to make this work, and I've already written up the development tickets for it.
The idea is to let users add their own player images and team logos, with everything stored locally in their browser. Nothing gets uploaded to ActionSims servers, and there won't be any shared image library. Whatever images you add will only show up in the browser where you added them.
There are a couple of drawbacks. If you clear your browser storage, you could lose your images, and they won't automatically carry over to another computer or browser. But I've accounted for that by including an option to export everything to a backup file and import it again whenever you need to.
I think this is a pretty good compromise. People can customize their games with their own images, and this feature won't require ActionSims to host or distribute any of those uploads. It doesn't eliminate every possible legal concern, but I think it avoids some of the bigger ones.
None of this has been built yet, but the tickets are ready. I think this is probably the best way to handle it.
Harlin
(joined · 239 posts · 389 karma)
, ago
About this:
"Most of us have full photo sets for DMB, Action, and OOTP, so anything most inline with those products' picture philosophies would work best!"
Whenever you have some time is it possible to point to a page that has something like this? We're trying to work out an idea of how it could be feasible to use drag n drop for player cards (uploading one at a time would be a pain for me and others I think). We also don't have any collections of player images/logos, so it would be good if something is already out there ready made.
BeatlesEternally (joined · 21 posts · 51 karma) , ago
Here you go!
http://www.apcsportscommunity.com/#/baseball-content-images
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/actionpcsports/baseball-f4/
Clucky (joined · 4 posts · 9 karma) , ago
I took the images and logos from the apc and organized them into a flattened directory structure. You should be able to download them here from my google drive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TBq7lI5_ivr0pZwFXtEJGzVTe6RPVthy/view?usp=drive_link
Harlin, it would be really nice if you could make a sort of mass import that would just pull them into the site for the user because there are LOTS of player images and logos. It would take a user a LONG time to import these things by hand. Food for thought.
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Thanks, Brian! I appreciate the feedback.
I've been considering a couple of approaches to this. One would allow users to upload their own player photos and logos, with those images stored locally in their browsers. Another would let users provide direct links to images hosted elsewhere, such as Imgur.
Both approaches would allow users to customize their experience without ActionSims having to host or distribute the images itself. There are tradeoffs, though. Browser storage can be cleared, and externally hosted images can disappear or become unavailable.
There are also copyright and licensing considerations. Even if users supply their own images, that doesn't automatically eliminate those concerns.
I'm interested in giving everyone the freedom to customize their game without creating unnecessary legal or technical complications. I know other baseball simulations offer photo repositories, but their approach may not necessarily be appropriate for a web-based application like ActionSims.
Thanks again for the suggestion and for playing!